NHN / Courtesy of NHN

NHN, a leading information technology company here, said Wednesday that its fourth-quarter net profit shifted to the black from a year earlier on the back of increased revenue from its IT and commerce services.

Net income for the October-December period came to 46.5 billion won ($38.8 million), a turnaround from a loss of 40.4 billion won a year earlier, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Its operating profit increased 66.1 percent to 25.2 billion won and sales grew 22 percent year-on-year to 542.6 billion won in the cited period.

NHN attributed the stronger bottom line to growing profit from its technology and commerce business.

Sales from its IT services, such as its cloud, jumped 62.4 percent to 66.1 billion won.

The company also said it enjoyed robust revenue in its commerce business, logging sales of 116.6 billion won, up 56.3 percent from the previous year.

Sales from advertising and payment services increased 14.1 percent to 217.8 billion won.

Payco Order, the company's digital ordering service, enjoyed a 14 percent increase in its amount of orders in the cited period.

Revenue from games rose 4.6 percent year-on-year to 103 billion won. NHN said its sales of online computer games hiked 15.5 percent to 39.6 billion won and sales of mobile games also gained 6.5 percent to 63.4 billion won.

The company plans to launch new play-to-earn (P2E) games to expand its online game business.

"With a focus on the game business this year, we will take a leap forward beyond the successful experiences we have enjoyed by actively seeking new opportunities in each area," NHN CEO Jung Woo-jin said during a conference call.

For the whole of 2021, the company's sales jumped 17 percent to 1.92 trillion won while net profit reached 130 billion won, up a whopping 365.1 percent from a year earlier. (Yonhap)